Guglielmo Pagnozzi is a clarinetist and alto and soprano saxophonist who was born in Turin on 30 March 1970 and is based in Bologna, where he has been active on the jazz scene since the early 1990s. Italian Wikipedia classes him as a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist, and his own biography describes a soloist, band leader, composer and "cultural promoter" who also acts. Discogs indexes 48 releases under his name, spread across free jazz, contemporary jazz, klezmer, Afrobeat, hip-hop, rock and Italian song, but the records under his own name and those of his closest collaborators sit squarely in jazz.

His teaching profile at Altramusica says he trained at Berklee and studied with Steve Lacy in Paris. His press biography adds that he came onto the Italian scene in the early 1990s playing with Enrico Rava, bassist Furio Di Castri and Paolo Fresu, and that he has performed in Italy, Europe, the United States and Africa alongside Lester Bowie, Famoudou Don Moye, Ernst Reijseger, Bob Moses and Roy Paci as well. Those are biographical claims rather than recording credits: on Discogs he is on record with Fresu, but not individually with Rava, Lacy or Bowie.

The documented start is Bologna's improvising scene. In 1994 he made La Negresse Oblige (Stile Libero), a duo record credited jointly to him and pianist Fabrizio Puglisi that Discogs tags Avant-garde Jazz. The same year he plays alto saxophone on tracks 3 and 6 of Amaremandorle, a T.A.O. album with drummer Francesco Cusa, singer Cristina Zavalloni and Paolo Fresu on trumpet, and joins the Swiss pianist Sylvie Courvoisier's quintet for Sauvagerie Courtoise, recorded live at the Cully Lavaux Jazz Festival on 26 March 1994. A biography on the Soundroutes site says he co-founded the Bologna association Bassesfere in the mid-1990s with Puglisi and Zavalloni; a 1996 Catalogo Bassesfere sampler is on Discogs, and Cusa's and Domenico Caliri's profiles describe the same collective.

Through the mid-1990s he is a reed player in the circle around Caliri's Specchio Ensemble: Suite No. 1 Per Quintetto Doppio (1995, recorded live at Teatro delle Celebrazioni, Bologna, in October 1994), with a rhythm section that includes Giovanni Maier, Puglisi and Cusa, and later Porcyville (2003). With Cusa and Puglisi he was also in Rosticceria Jorge, whose L'Inferno Dei Polli (Splasc(h), 1996) credits him with composing as well as clarinet and saxophone, and he plays alto saxophone and clarinet on Cusa's own Impasse... Su Jacques Prévert (Splasc(h), 1997), with Gianni Gebbia on the second alto. He plays alto, soprano and clarinet on La Vendetta Di Grog (C.M.C., 1996) by the Lorenzo Gasperoni Mamud Band, a group that also had Caliri on guitar and Alberto Mandarini on trumpet, and the same band recorded Amore Pirata! (Il Manifesto, 1998) with Lester Bowie, a release Discogs lists among his appearances without itemizing his part.

A second thread starts in the same decade. He played clarinet in the Gojim Klezmer Ensemble and Dire Gelt (Klezmer Music Yiddish Songs, 1996) and in Hot Azoi (1999), and he is credited on alto saxophone on two tracks of the Bologna hip-hop group Sangue Misto's 1994 album SXM. Through the 2000s he was a working sideman for Italian song and world-pop acts: Giorgio Conte (L'ambasciatore Dei Sogni, 2000; Il Contestorie; a 2004 live album), Roy Paci & Aretuska (Suonoglobal, 2007) and Roy Paci's Corleone (Blaccahénze, 2013), and later the Wu Ming Contingent (2014) and Il Teatro Degli Orrori (2015). He also plays alto and clarinet on Mop Mop's Kiss Of Kali (INFRACom!, 2009), a future-jazz record whose horn section includes baritone saxophonist Beppe Scardino.

His own bands came into focus after 2007. In that year he founded the Jazz Gang, a group devoted to pre-bop jazz; its live album Jazz Roots Live!! (Blackonions, 2009) was recorded at the Torrione Jazz Club in Ferrara with pianist Alessandro Altarocca, bassist Roberto Bartoli and drummer Filippo Mignatti, and covers "The Mooche", "I've Got Rhythm" and "St. James Infirmary" among its nine tracks. The Voodoo Sound Club, his other band, went the other way, toward Afrobeat, funk, desert blues, psychedelia and what the band calls voodoo jazz: Guglielmo Pagnozzi & Voodoo Sound Club came out on Cinedelic in 2011, with Pagnozzi on alto saxophone, organ, shekere and voice, and the group's Ecce Homo followed on Cinedelic in May 2023 with him on soprano saxophone and electronics.

Gentle Heartquake, released on 22 February 2023 by the Italian avant-garde label Setola di Maiale (catalogue SM4480), is four long tracks by a quintet with guitarist Davide Angelica, bassist Salvatore Lauriola, drummer Gaetano Alfonsi and percussionist Danilo Mineo, with Pagnozzi on alto saxophone, clarinet and synthesizer. He has said it was recorded live in one room without retakes, with synthesizer and wind parts added afterward, and that "Virus" and "Alone" date from 1993. ANSA, reporting on the release, heard accents from Ornette Coleman to Afrobeat, blues, funk and rock in it and noted the Poe poem "Alone" as a starting point. In the same period he has been playing in a quartet with pianist Andrea Calì, bassist Filippo Cassanelli and drummer Andrea Grillini, which venue listings for 2019 concerts describe as focused on repertoire from Sidney Bechet to John Coltrane, and in a quintet with a second saxophonist that played Mingus, Monk and Coltrane at Bologna's Arena del Sole in June 2022. He also plays soprano saxophone on Mauro Patti's Telamon (Dodicilune, 2023) alongside trumpeter Giovanni Falzone.

Outside the jazz clubs he writes and performs for stage and screen. His profile lists film scores, silent-film soundtracks, poetry readings and theatre projects, and Discogs credits him with the music for a 1994 spoken-word edition of Tama Janowitz's Slaves of New York. His digital catalogue also lists Nevermore, a five-track jazz album dated 2021 on Apple Music, an EP (Rite for Holy Ghosts, 2024) and three single-track ambient pieces (La Boschereccia, La Stanza Gialla, La Stanza Rossa, 2024).

Pagnozzi describes his art as "free" and cross-disciplinary, and has said "the Art is one." His named jazz influences are John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and Miles Davis, with Vivaldi, Bach and Chopin as classical reference points. His work splits into two clear registers: the early-jazz vocabulary of the Jazz Gang and the quartet (from Sidney Bechet to Coltrane), and the electric, groove-driven writing of the Voodoo Sound Club and Gentle Heartquake, where alto saxophone and synthesizer are set against Fela Kuti-style Afrobeat repetition. The free-improvisation and avant-garde work with Puglisi, Cusa, Caliri and Courvoisier is the earliest and best-documented layer. He treats jazz as his home ground but keeps stepping into klezmer, hip-hop, rock and song, and the Discogs genre tags for his own releases reflect that mix (Jazz, with Latin and Funk / Soul or Electronic on the Voodoo Sound Club records).